It's Spring and Senioritis is Rampant: How to Make it To Summer
It's happened to the best of teachers, you slog your way through winter and find yourself in the spring of the school term with a class full of apathetic seniors who just don't care. While you feel compelled to finish out the class curriculum they just show no desire to participate. It may be time to modify the curriculum to include a couple of months time on some life skills. Because...life is about to get very real for them. They may still be uninterested but hopefully you'll get a few who will participate.
Start with the socratic method of teaching life skills. Essentially, the first lesson should be interesting and challenging but something they think they know a lot about but most don't: buying a car. So the interest approach is..."Guys, you graduate tonight and tomorrow you want to buy a car. How does that process work?" There will always be a several who won't care, but "humor your teacher and make me feel better about each of you graduating." Seniors know everything right? They should be able to outline all the details within just a few moments. To increase participation, or at least interest, you can make friends with a local banker and have him/her come in to help answer questions.
Other topics you can cover include:
- Using a Checkbook
- How a Credit Card works (minimum payments and accruing interest)
- Anatomy of a Paycheck (Who's FICA and why does he get so much money)
- How to Live On a Budget
- New versus Used (cotton rows look the same whether the tractor is shiny or 5 years old and covered in dust) or (designer clothes are great but that outfit could've bought a month of groceries. Hope you like peanut butter on stale crackers until the first of the month)
- Do you know what you don't want to do for a living? (This is often more important than thinking you know what you want to do.)
- Ask some locals 5 or 10 years out of high school who have interesting job stories to come in and share their path (or lack of clear career path).
- Goal setting - How do you know if you've accomplished anything if you never set a goal?
- Welcome to your job interview - Here's what I found on social media about you. Why should I trust you in my workplace or talking to my customers?
- What the police can and can't do for you (Pro tip: They don't care that your power is out, call the power company. Pro tip #2: running makes things worse not better). See if your local police ( or local lawyer) will talk about the common problems new graduates and early 20 somethings face.
- Homeownership - It's all fun playing house until something expensive breaks. Which leads to the last suggestion...
- Saving - It's not just for new motorcycles and beach vacations
These topics shouldn't come from the rosy, idealism of utopia. They need to be real and addressed with a mix of stories, life examples, and role playing. These guys don't know what they don't know and you may not get through to all of them but hopefully they will have a moment of pause where they say to themselves, "Wow, there's more to that than I realized."
We'd love to hear any other topics you came up with. Feel free to reach out to us on social media or email me at brian@onelessthing.net
Good luck!
